


A Trick for Chocolate

by ABitObsessed, Blixer



Series: ShuAkeWeek2020 [3]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Roleswap, ShuAkeWeek2020, This is kinda self-indulgent, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:42:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27233689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABitObsessed/pseuds/ABitObsessed, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blixer/pseuds/Blixer
Summary: Akira heads to Leblanc after a rough day.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Series: ShuAkeWeek2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1988329
Kudos: 40





	A Trick for Chocolate

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: Roleswap, Chocolate, Comfort
> 
> hey would you look at that, we tackled them all!
> 
> This is a future chapter of a longer multichapter fic that we are planning!
> 
> 3.

Akira’s day has a statistically high chance of not getting any worse, but he’s not holding his breath.

Another damn fan had called him Shido-san again, over and over and over. Akira  _ hated _ that name. Even after he told her to just call him Ren, she didn’t listen, or didn’t care, or had some stupid idiotic idea that she should pay respect to him, or uphold some sort of fan-idol distance. 

Fuck, they looked the same age. He didn’t understand why being famous made him so impossibly hard to talk to.

He was already in a bad mood when that festering pustule of a father, mouth spewing filth and poison, had called him with another damn shutdown request. And it wasn’t like he could refuse--Shido had threatened him into compliance by mentioning  _ her  _ again.

God, when Akira got the chance he was going to take that repulsively bald head of his, dunk it into a boiling black pit of tar, coat it with blindingly white feathers, and then throw him to the wolves. He couldn’t tell if he wanted said wolves to be metaphorical or literal yet. Shido fucking deserved some good old fashioned, revolutionary-type torture and humiliation.

He pretended it was Shido when he found the Shadow of the obscure, mildly-threatening politician that was today’s target. He pretended it was Shido when he shot the damn thing in the legs, when he took his two-handed sword in his hands and cut off it’s arms, when he wrapped the chain binding his wrists around its neck, pulling back on it with all of his contained fury and rage, until he heard the bone snap, until the damn thing dissolved very anticlimactically into black bits with one last dying, choking gasp.

He immediately regrets it, as he always does. Monster that he is, he deserves the pain he feels every time he kills, when the demon in his body carelessly gnaws away at another piece of his heart for every soul he snuffs out.

He’d cry if he hadn’t run out of tears years ago.

He steps out of the Metaverse, his eyes aching as they always do. He squints instinctually to try and lessen the pain, but it never does much.

When he feels the first drops of rain hit his nose, he sighs. Looks like statistics don’t particularly matter today.

The weather man hadn’t said anything about rain today, the liar. So of course he doesn’t have an umbrella. He decides to wait it out.

Statistics. Right. The rain only gets worse.

Today is a very, very bad day.

His apartment is an excruciatingly long walk away. And he can’t take refuge in any of the shops around here; he’ll be too easily recognized with how many people are crowding indoors. And with public opinion of him being so poor...he’s not about to isolate himself with them. They’d probably have lots to say to him, all of which would be either completely false or entirely inaccurate. And all of it negative.

That’s when he remembers that Leblanc is closer than his apartment, only a few blocks away. Honestly, he could use a cup of coffee after the shit he’s been through today.

Not only that, Goro is there. He won’t say no to a pretty face in a barista’s apron. And a conversation with him might actually make this day somewhat bearable.

He resigns himself to getting soaked, fiddles with the handle of his attache case, and sets out into the rain.

It’s not freezing, but it is right at that line of being cool and being uncomfortable, and that fact alone makes this kind of rain absolutely miserable to walk through. He speeds up his walk so that he can get out of it faster. He’s already soaked, though, and his shirt clings uncomfortably to his skin. The gel in his hair has long since washed out, half of his fringe being held back by the one red, one black, and one purple clip in his hair.

Most of the people on the sidewalk are content to let him pass by, parting around him dutifully, umbrellas shielding their expressions. At least they have the courtesy to shift them out of the way so that they don’t accidentally poke his already aching eyes out. 

As he waits to cross the street, he can hear some people behind him whispering not so subtly behind him. 

“Hey, that’s Shido-san, isn’t it? The Devilish Detective?”

Everytime Akira is called Shido-san, he wants to rip his own eyeballs out and make whoever dares to utter that name swallow them whole while he watches them choke.

He sighs. His thoughts have been taking rather dark and violent turns, lately. 

He blames Shido. It’s usually his fault, and the scumbag deserves every bit of poison Akira throws his way. It doesn’t matter whether it’s his fault or not. 

Fucker.

He respectfully does not turn around and rip into them with his words. Shido is expecting him to be the perfect, alluring Devilish Detective, after all.

“Yeah, that’s him alright,” he hears one of them mutter. The detective can’t tell if they want him to hear or if they’re just that bad at being quiet. “You heard what he said about the Phantom Thieves even after they defeated Medjed?”

“I did,” someone else grumbles. “Obviously he’s wrong. The Phantom Thieves are justice themselves! There’s no way they’re wrong!”

“I hope they change Shido-san’s heart next. He deserves to have his heart changed for even daring to go against the Thieves!”

They all make general noises of assent.

It turns Akira’s insides that they can’t fucking think for themselves. Is it really so hard to think of their own opinions on the matter instead of just accepting whatever the media decides to feed them?

“But hey,” a different one says, “he’s even cuter in person, isn’t he?”

“Oh, shut up!”   


“What? It’s true!”

Akira tunes them out when the light indicates that they can now safely walk across the street.

The compliment does not make him feel any better. In fact, it actually makes him feel worse--everything about his stupid image has been manufactured by Shido. His opulent clothes, his hairstyle, his mannerisms--he even has a damn script of pre-written responses.

They want the Detective. They don’t want Akira Kurusu.

Akira despises standing out. Every time someone’s eyes are on him he feels like bugs are skittering across his body, and he wants to crawl out of his own skin and just be a festering black core of rotting flesh. He wants that core of him to melt away into shadow, leave behind the husk of his skin as a distraction. Anything to fade into the anonymity of the crowd.

It will never happen. Not as long as he is Ren Shido.

By the time he reaches Leblanc he’s in a positively foul mood and is so soaked he's sure his skin has somehow turned into a sponge, absorbing the rain and bogging him down.

Shitty, shitty day. He just wants some fucking coffee.

He opens the door, and the bell jingles. The detective looks around, checking for any customers to see if he still has to keep up appearances. 

There are no customers in the booths and no Sojiro in the kitchen. The only person here is one Goro Sakura, who looks up from where he is wiping the counter, smirking at Akira’s water-logged and disheveled look.

Akira can be himself if it’s just Goro. No pretenses. No judgement. No need to slide on a mask.

He can be himself, whatever that self is.

And his real self really wants to wipe that damn smirk off of Goro’s face, so he aims to fluster. Goro is easy to fluster. 

Most of the time.

“Honey, I’m home,” he says with his best virgin-killer smile. He even blows a kiss, just because he can.

When Goro doesn’t immediately flush, Akira knows he’s lost.

“You’re back awfully late,” Goro responds smoothly. 

_ Today is just not my day _ , he thinks to himself, but he doesn’t mind it so much this time around. He watches the barista catch his kiss, smiling a cute little smile. He brings the kiss to his own lips, kissing his palm while throwing out his own cheeky wink.

Shit. That’s cute. Akira flushes a little.

“Oho, what’s this?” Goro asks, smile turning smug. “Did I manage to catch you off guard, for once?”

Akira stares a little too long for it to be comfortable before he manages to scoff, a feeble attempt to gain back some of his composure. 

“As if,” he mutters, moving to sit in his usual spot, near the end of the counter, right next to the books. He sets his briefcase on the floor, crossing his arms and legs and wringing some rain from his black vest, purposefully throwing as much water around just to be petty. 

He knows Goro will have to clean it up sooner or later. 

“I’m practically unshakeable,” Akira continues. “Must have been a trick of the light. The lighting is rather cozy and warm in here, after all. Might have been some red part of the stained glass lamps that got casted on my face.”

Akira is bullshitting. Goro looks understandably unimpressed.

“Uh-huh. You just keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel any better,” Goro says, scowling at the mess he’s making. The detective grins a little at that.

Akira lays his arms straight out on the counter, along with his forehead. He sighs dramatically, closes his eyes, and lets the water drip from his hair down his face and neck, making soft plops when they hit the wood. “You’re so mean to me.”

Akira feels Goro poking at his head with one of his fingers. “Just paying you back, for all those times you felt it necessary to embarrass me in public.”

“C’mon, I can’t help it. You make it too easy,” Akira mumbles, smiling a little as he relaxes, tension easing from his shoulders, slowly becoming one with the counter.

“Don’t blame me for your utter lack of restraint,” he grumbles back, giving up on trying to make Akira move.

He really needed this. For someone to just treat him like...well, like a human being. He gets tossed around between people and places so often, it’s exhausting. For most of his waking hours he feels like just an object to be molded, bent, and broken into whatever shape they wanted him to be in. An idol, a reformed son, a student, a flirt, an exper--

He forcefully cuts off the sluice of memories, but he can’t hold back the involuntary shiver at the feelings they bring.

He feels a towel being laid over his head before someone is rubbing their hands gently over his scalp, drying his hair.

“What’s this?” Akira asks, trying and failing to look up at Goro, as he applies just enough pressure on his head to signal that he wants Akira to stay down. He complies, for now. It feels good after all.

“It’s a towel,” Goro snarks, his slow movements a contrast to his teasing tone. “You use it to clean up messes.”

“Well, no shit, Sherlock,” Akira snarks back. “I’m well aware of what a towel is. I’m asking why you’re scrubbing me dry.”

“Because you’re a mess?” Goro supplies, making another pass down his scalp. He laughs when Akira makes a mock-indignant gasp. “And also because you’re dripping water all over the place. Boss is going to kill me for letting you get his cafe dirty.”

“Wouldn’t that be a tragedy,” Akira bemoans, resigning himself to ruined hair. His hair is usually styled to look artfully messy, but it really doesn’t make a difference, as it is naturally artfully messy. Doesn’t mean he still doesn’t have to gel it in the morning. 

It’s an absolute pain, one which he would gladly skip if he could. 

“Goro Sakura, dead,” Akira intones in his best narrator’s voice, gesturing with his hands for some added drama. “Killed for letting his dad’s cafe get just a little wet. I can just imagine it: Boss entering the cafe, shouting ‘Who the fuck let my cafe get dirty?’, all while carrying an illegally-obtained shotgun. The victim is left on the ground, multiple gunshot wounds. There’s blood everywhere, even in the beans. Customers claim that the coffee tastes metallic for weeks after the death.” 

Akira lifts his head when he feels Goro’s hands leave, missing the warmth. He sweeps that emotion into the corner of his mind labeled ‘Troublesome Shit I Would Really Rather Not Deal With Ever, If Given the Choice’. Instead he mock swoons, lifting the back of his hand to his forehead, letting out an exaggerated gasp. “How terrible! I think I’m going to cry, and then faint dramatically!”

Goro flips him off. 

Akira laughs, one of those full-belly kinds where he's sure he doesn't look at all attractive. He feels younger, for some reason. 

"You better not be telling my customers to go fuck themselves again!" Akira hears Sojiro's voice calling from upstairs, and then Goro retracts his finger, looking thoroughly embarrassed. 

Akira freezes. He didn’t know Sojiro was around.

Shit.

Akira quickly slips on his Devilish Detective mask, hoping that Sojiro miraculously didn’t hear him not be the perfect doll his father requires him to be.

Goro scowls at him through his blush, clearly not liking the fact that Akira has become his plastic, false self. He doesn’t bother to hide his displeasure, even as Akira smiles sunnily.

“I’m not,” Goro promises, and he sounds entirely unconvincing. Sojiro looks understandably unconvinced when he steps out, leveling a  _ look  _ at him.

“Uh-huh,” he says as he crosses his arms. “I’ll believe that when you can brew a better cup of coffee than me. Which will be never, kid. So I don’t believe you.”

Goro just grumbles. Akira smirks like he’s supposed to as he lays his elbows on the counter, laying his chin on his steepled hands, the towel falling across his shoulders. Sojiro gets a good look at Akira, and then his face lights up in recognition.

“You’re that detective kid, aren’t you? Shido’s son?” he asks amicably enough.

Akira grits his teeth, hoping that one day he’ll be able to tear through his own tongue and shove it down Shido’s throat. He forces out what he hopes in a convincing smile as the murderous thoughts swirl in his brain. “That’s me.”

Sojiro, bless this man, seems to pick up on something in his tone or his body language. The cafe owner’s eyes blink once before he rubs the back of his neck a little sheepishly, as if he is silently apologizing for bringing up a sore topic.

“Well, I’m not one to turn down customers,” he says instead, immediately dropping the subject.

“Lord knows you need them, Boss,” Goro teases, directing Sojiro’s attention away from Akira, for which he is grateful. “This cafe is essentially empty practically everyday. You sure it isn’t going to go under soon?”

“That’s none of your concern,” Sojiro says. “If you’re worried about anything, you don’t need to be. I have enough to put a roof over your and your sisters’ dumb knuckleheads for a while yet.”

Akira reaches down for his case, popping it open and getting his homework out. He knows that he’ll be here for a long time, as he usually consumes multiple cups of coffee over the course of the hours that he stays. He figures he might as well be productive if he’s going to have to keep up appearances. 

“Very reassuring,” Goro deadpans.

“I’m sure it is,” Sojiro fires back.

Akira has learned that it is rather difficult to interrupt them when they are like this. Sojiro and Goro could argue playfully back and forth about pointless things for hours.

Akira doesn’t mind. He really enjoys seeing them be so comfortable around each other. It makes him wish his own family wasn’t so god awful terrible. And as long as Goro is distracting Sojiro, he doesn’t have to actively, well, keep up the act.

He pulls out a pencil, and tackles the first problem. He lets their voices, as they work around the shop, along with the soft buzz of the TV play as pleasant background noise, gathering all of his spiraling thoughts and dark emotions, simmering them slowly, turning hard edges and sharp corners into something smooth and warm, and far less likely to hurt him, or anyone else if they decide to leave him through his mouth.

He isn’t really paying attention to the substance of the conversation until Sojiro gets a call and steps away to take it.

Akira looks up to make eye contact with Goro, who simply shrugs and goes back to sorting the beans, something that Akira has noticed he does when he has nothing else to do. Every time he visits Leblanc they’re in a different order. 

It must drive Sojiro crazy. 

Akira goes back to the math problem currently kicking his ass.

After a couple of peaceful minutes, as much as one can be serene while agonizing over trigonometry, Sojiro steps back in, closing up his cell. He turns to address Goro. “Hey, kid. I need to go check on Futaba.”

Akira starts at the name, his pencil freezing mid-stroke. Goro notices.

Goro always notices.

Goro furrows his brows in concern, but he knows he can’t talk about it, not with Sojiro around. The barista turns to address Sojiro, and it’s easy to mistake his concern for Akira as concern for his adoptive sister. 

Akira is most likely reading far too much into the situation, and he’s not worried about Akira at all. Which would hurt, but it wouldn’t be surprising.

Akira deserves it. He killed Futaba’s mother, after all. 

“Is there something wrong?” he hears Goro say, addressed to Sojiro. It’s hard to hear through his rapidly spiraling mind as it sorts through memory after memory of nausea, needles, darkness, fear, and the crushing, agonizing realization that he was alone, and that no one was going to save him.

He’s always alone, even when surrounded.

“Nah,” Sojiro chuckles. “She called me, mentioned something along the lines of ‘limited edition’, and then promptly hung up. I figured you could watch the store while I go see what that’s all about.”

“Oh,” Goro says, his worry melting away, instead replaced by a mischievous grin. 

See? Not worried about him at all.

He lays his forehead on the counter again to hide his expression. He doesn’t trust his face not to betray him, not right now.

“Good luck with that,” Goro’s voice says, but it’s muffled. The words sound as if they are coming from far away. “You should probably take your coat and hat. You know how she gets--she’s gonna keep you until closing, as usual.”

Sojiro chuckles warmly, and Akira hears something that sounds an awful lot like a parent ruffling their kid’s head.

He doesn’t know why he knows the sound. The only time an adult ever put their hands on his head is if they were trying to yank it in a certain direction.

“C’mon, stop that! I spent all morning getting it perfect!” Goro complains in a teasingly exasperated manner, the sound of a light slap echoing in the shop.

That sound is very familiar, especially as it gets magnified in his ears, soundwaves bouncing over and over again. 

Sojiro laughs again, and the sounds of shuffling clothes can be heard. 

That too, is familiar.

“Yeah, I know, kid. I had to drag you out of the bathroom myself.” He opens the door to the rain. Akira, in some untainted part of his mind, hopes that he grabbed an umbrella. “Don’t get up to too much trouble, you hear? And serve the kid some coffee!”

“Will do, Boss!” Goro shouts, waving as Sojiro exits the shop, hearing him pop open his umbrella before the rush of the pouring rain is lessened by the door closing and the faint jingle of the bell above the door.

There is silence for a while. Akira hears the news change from one story to the next.

He feels Goro petting his head. Softly. He can feel each of his individual fingers carding through his damp hair, the pads of his fingertips light against his head. When he reaches the nape of his neck he goes backwards, dragging his nails gently along, little shockwaves of sensation that slowly bring Akira up out of the dark pool of his thoughts.

He hadn’t even realized how tense he had been, not until he starts relaxing under Goro’s ministrations. He lets out a little sigh.

Goro pets him even as the news moves on to the next story.

Akira eventually lets out another sigh, peeking up at Goro. He’s got a little smile on, but there is a concerned line to his brow that doesn’t go unnoticed by Akira.

“Work stuff again?” Goro whispers softly, even though there is no one else around to overhear.

“Yeah,” Akira agrees, because he can’t exactly tell him that he’s feeling upset about certain things in his past, like the fact that killed his sister’s mother and that his father forced him to kill someone else again today.

Or of the other things his father orders him to do, when currying favors.

“Hmm,” the barista hums. “Is this case mentally straining, or is the content something that bothers you?” Then Goro’s eyes sharpen into knives, as his free hand clenches. “Or is it your stupid fans again?”

“I--” Akira begins, and he doesn’t have the heart or the brain power to come up with a believable lie. He buries his face back into the counter again. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

He feels Goro step away, hears him walk around the counter until the detective feels his presence right next to him. “Fair enough,” he says, and then he’s grabbing Akira’s gloved hand and his shoulder, nudging him to stand on his feet, to which Akira groans but complies. “But let’s at least get you warm. You’ve been shivering ever since you came in.”

Akira looks at his hand and is surprised to find himself, indeed, shivering.

“...I didn’t even notice.”

“I figured as much,” Goro replies, smiling knowingly. “C’mon, upstairs.”

Akira grumbles but lets himself be dragged up the stairs, fixated on how good Goro’s hair looks when it's pulled up into a ponytail. 

He is swiftly deposited on the lumpy couch, and Goro goes to rummage around in a box, hidden in a dark corner of the attic.

Now that Akira isn’t trapped in his own mind again, he focuses on his bodily sensations. The first thing he notices is that his clothes are uncomfortable. His shirt sticks to his body, his pants rub coarsely against his skin, and he can feel his socks squish everytime he shifts his feet in his boots.

Okay, that’s really uncomfortable.

As Akira swiftly undoes the laces on both of them, yanking them off, along with his soaked socks, he hears Goro mutter, “There you are.”

And then something heavy is being draped across his shoulders, and around his body. It’s being wrapped rather tightly around him, actually--he can’t really move his arms.

“Um, Goro?” Akira questions, head poking out of his blanket burrito. “What’s this all about?”

“Encouragement,” Goro supplies, making his way towards the stairs. “So that you’ll stay put. And so that you’ll stop tracking water everywhere.”

“But you’re the one who dragged me up here,” Akira mumbles petulantly. “That’s hardly my fault.”

“Shush. Stay here while I go clean up, just in case another customer miraculously shows up in this torrential rain.”

Akira sighs and resigns himself to his, admittedly comfortable, burrito fate. “Fine.”

Akira leans back against the couch, listening to the sounds of Goro walking down the stairs, muttering about tidyness as he rummages around for towels and cleaning supplies in the storage closet.

The blanket is kinda cold, but the sounds of his own breathing and the pleasant weight of the blanket make up for it. He passes the time by challenging himself to make as many words as he can from the letters on the bags of beans lining the opposite wall.

_ Tin. Not. Man. Ate. It. _

He huffs. He can come up with better words.

_ Climb.  _

_ Arise.  _

_ Excellent. _

He hears Goro messing around in the kitchen, if the distant clang of pots is any indication.

_ Liberate. Liberation. _

Even through his miserably wet clothes his body heat slowly warms up the fluffy blanket, trapping it very effectively. Akira pulls it closer to himself, even as he feels his eyes start to fall.

He really hasn’t been getting enough sleep lately, what with everything that’s been going on. 

And, well. He doesn’t exactly fight the waves of drowsiness. He hasn’t felt this comfortable in a long time.

His thoughts are mercifully quiet and his mind brings him no nightmares.

His rest isn’t long, though. The next thing he knows is that he’s being gently shaken awake by Goro.

“Up, Akira, up,” he hears him say, but Akira isn’t really inclined to listen.

“Noooo…” he mumbles, burrowing further into the heat of the blanket. Goro chuckles quietly.

“I have something for you,” he responds, and that’s really all the convincing Akira needs.

As Akira blinks the haziness from his eyes, he notices that the rain is still pouring outside, and that Goro is holding a steaming cup of something.

Right. His coffee. The whole reason he came here in the first place.

Akira manages to wiggle out of his blanket burrito enough to cradle the warm cup in his hands. He must still be half-asleep because he thinks that his coffee smells a lot like hot chocolate instead.

He blows on it and takes a sip.

“...this  _ is  _ hot chocolate,” Akira mutters quietly, blinking in surprise.

“That it is,” Goro responds with just as much volume, crossing his arms. 

“But I wanted coffee…” Akira mumbles even as he takes another sip of the rich drink. It sends goosebumps of warmth all the way down to his toes.

“Nope, no coffee for you,” Goro says, now gently ushering Akira to stand up. “You need something that warms you up better, and also something that isn’t designed to keep you awake. Don’t think I didn’t notice those dark circles under your eyes.”

Akira winces. He thought he covered them up well enough with his makeup...and then he realizes he didn’t use his waterproof set today. The rain must have washed some of it away.

But even then, no one else had commented on his appearance. Was Goro that perceptive? Was he really looking that hard? Did he really care enough to notice?

Goro is now insistently pulling at his free arm, and Akira has to adjust so that his drink doesn’t spill. “Have you been getting enough sleep?” Goro asks.

Akira hasn’t gotten enough sleep in years. In his half-asleep daze and distracted by warmth, he doesn’t think to come up with a lie. 

“No,” he says simply, taking another sip as Goro somehow manages to get him to stand up, blanket sitting precariously on his shoulders. The cold rush of air is offset by the hot chocolate and Goro’s warm fingers on his wrist.

“How come?” Goro asks, his brow furrowing in concern again as he drags Akira to the bed, sitting him down and tucking the blanket back around him. “Your employers keeping you late again?”

Akira shakes his head and hides his shudder with another sip from his drink. It has nothing to do with the cold. “...nightmares are keeping me up,” he mumbles quietly.

Goro sits down next to him on the bed, leaning against his side. “Nightmares? What are they about?”

Akira thinks again of needles, of memories of a war he never took part in, of Shadow’s wails as they disappear, of unwanted hands on his body. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he mutters bitterly. Goro hums.

“That bad, huh,” he says, mostly to himself. “Well, that’s fine. Just finish your hot chocolate. Then, you are going to sleep.”

Akira sighs. As much as he would like to, he has homework to finish and case files to review. The little catnap had already eaten up too much of his time. “I can’t. I have work.”

“Shush,” Goro says, laying his head on Akira’s shoulder. “The only thing you are finishing today is that cup right there, and then you are going to  _ sleep. _ ”

Oh no. Goro is repeating himself.

Akira never wins when Goro starts repeating himself.

He sighs again, draining the last drops of his drink, leaving behind some dregs of powdered chocolate at the base of the cup.

Goro takes it from him and sets it on the shelf before guiding Akira to lay down, wrapping him in a blanket burrito again.

Despite his attempts to resist, he can feel his eyelids start to droop again. Goro moves to get up. He can’t reach for him in his burrito.

“Stay?” he asks drowsily instead, and a new kind of warmth fills him when Goro smiles softly at him, brushing some of his hair off to the side.

“Of course,” he whispers, laying his hand over his eyes. “Now sleep.”

“You won’t leave?” he asks, even as he plummets into the warm darkness of sleep.

He feels Goro shift, and then he feels the warmth of his body next to him, even through the thick blanket.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Goro’s warm voice whispers in his ear, and then Akira is gone.

For once, his sleep is dreamless.

**Author's Note:**

> ABitObsessed: Guess what? This is a glimpse into the future series we have planned! We've been planning for a while, and we couldn't wait to show you! We hope you look forward to it, and enjoy this chapter!
> 
> Here's my twitter! Please be mindful that it is an 18+ account!  
> https://twitter.com/ObssessedA
> 
> Blixer: thank you again for reading! we have a few other fics if you enjoyed this!


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